Lateral Fragments of Bojangles Going-Ons. Mostly Harmless.

I bend over to start detaching the poles. “DON’T TOUCH THAT!” My hand snaps back, wrong move. I scan the rest of the tent, trying to think in common sense patterns, trying to be useful. I can feel her glower as I assess with my useless masculine intellect. Woman is now in charge here, once they’re on a roll, it’s unstoppable, we’re castrated, they’re Amazons. Her worldly wisdom contrasts my weakness. Dave and I look at each other in recognition of this pattern of the world now, maybe we’re just sperm donors, only designated for a laugh. We take a step back, fiddling at the sides with hands like nervous spiders. After she’s basically packed the whole tent up by herself, she storms off, head fucked from a storm, looking for something to contrast the rage she must feel, but still looking at us like naughty boys. We start walking off and chatting. Big mistake, did you forget something guys? She hasn’t. She stomps back, mouth a line of anger flatlining. “Are you going to walk off and leave the van unlocked?”

Fuck.

I see her around the dancefloor later, and am apologetic, she doesn’t want to hear though so I lose her and go to talk with the rest of us useless males, making idle observations of the party, always on the look-out for her, always on the look-out. I’m kind of scared of what to say to her, everything is wrong. We got to where some “industry” cool cats are cooling at their cars, and I go sit with some others nearby, and make Seinfeld-esque observations. To me, part of the fun at parties is within the twisted dialect that happens at doofs, by proxy of the creative and twisted atmosphere that always seems to be at doofs.

FRAGMENTS OF DIALEKT UNFRAMED “Thing is about swag is it’s all about Waltzing Matilda. Stealing and shit and #yolo. Once a jolly swagman, you know? Then at the end he’s like cops aren’t going to get me, #yolo, you know?” “No, that’s weird.” “I write books, you know. Like kids books.” “Well, what about choose your own adventure books? How about doing a choose your adventure book where you walk into the woods and you get fucked by a bear.” “How about those ones where you turn the page and you wake up dead?”

A chick walks up and is given a sombrero. It sits vertically on her hooded head and she sways in the wind. “Thing is, right, this sombrero is all I ever wanted…” “All you ever wanted in life…” “All I ever wanted in life was some understanding and respect…” “…and now I have it, it’s not really what I wanted, it’s not all that great. It’s going to make me fall over.” “maybe sombreros aren’t all we need in life, maybe there’s something else, some grander mystery.” “Let’s bake a cake.” “What do you mean?” “Look, check it out, there’s some bubbles.” “Wouldn’t it be cool if there were corn chips in bubbles, then you could pop one and eat them like yum.” “But then they’d be soapy.” “At least they’d be clean.” “This is true.”

She comes back, now changed into another dress and a large pair of ski-style glasses. She’s been hanging out with some people with blue paint all over them. “I stuck it together with one pin.” “Oh.” “So how long are we going to go?” “The party is sort of shutting up now, we’ll go soon.” “Let’s go in half an hour.” Okay. 10 minutes later. “Are we going to go?” “It’s only been five minutes.” “What do you mean.” “Nothing, it’s cool, we can take our time…” “Yeah yeah, nah, we’re alright…” “You seem like you wanted to go before…” Nah I’m just tired, I’m cool, I like this, I enjoy the sun…

2am – Saturday Night – Mindbuffer: Audio-visual dynamite display, it’s all Autechre, people doing ketamine dances, I feel straight as fuck… “I thought you said they were girls.” “Well when I saw them, it was at Enig’matik, I could only see them through this little slit in the wall and see all this hanson blond hair and shit…” “So you thought they were girls.” “I didn’t think they were hot or anything, I just saw them vibing off each other and so on…” Another guy cuts in with observation. “This mate of mine saw them and he said “Pwoar, those birds are cranking!””

I go to bed and my stomach is twisting. I’m like the straightest person at this party and I’m feeling fucked and miserable, she comes in and out of the van with new friends. “This is Kristian…” “Um hey.” “We’re making chocolate fondue and apples, do you want some?” “I’m going to die of nausea.” “No need to be rude.” I’m not.

I go to the chembogs at 5am and the sun is starting to rise. There are two girls waiting to go. There’s a female signs on the toilet, but I just don’t care. One of the girls saunters up to me, smelling like wine and rollies. “Hey can I get some paper off you?” I hesitate. “Sure.” She rips some off. “Don’t take it all.” It’s magically wet when she gives it back. I got to the toilet, this is horrible. My door is knocked at while I’m trying to crap. “Is anyone actually going to the toilet in there?!” YES. I feel better afterwards though, but vaguely embarrassed that one end of the paper is wet, and hope it’s not diseased.

Sam, John and I are standing on the edge of the dancefloor furtherest away from the front, considering Hugo swaggering around with his talking stick, the leader of the positive affirmation hippy trees movement. Hugo directs the crowd flawlessly, entertainer and performer in his element. “Now I want you all to get on each side, and I want you to throw dancefloor energy at each other.” Some comply, others of us who aren’t susceptible to even fun direction smirk, even though we all love what he’s doing. Someone makes the observation that Hugo looks like Gandalf with the stick. “Hehe fully. YOU SHALL NOT PASS!” Hugo kneels down and strikes the ground with power, and magically, a mini-twister appears from the dust where there were no others. I elbow Dave. “Fuck man, did you see that?!” “Yeah man, that’s like proper magic.” Hugo continues directing. “Now I want you all to dance in a circle, and spin around in circles. Now change direction. I want you to touch a person you pass and they are tagged. They’ll now join and you’ll all join the circle.” “I want you all to look out of the floor and choose a tree. That’s your tree, and then you’ll look like that tree. Raise your hands and show your branches, feel the energy flow through you. We are all one symbiotic primordal soup, this is what we are, this is where we come from.” Whilst rapping, Hugo is approached by another ginger. “This guy here is the most beautiful man.” And he puts his arm around him. The other ginger is enraptured, he stares at Hugo adoringly. “Now let’s all get together and have one big hug…” All these kids with eyes like saucepans mosh into each other, big sexy time.” John, Sam and I smirk. “This is SO GAY!” We crack up laughing, but the spell is cast, positivity has been achieved. But we’re natural cynics. “I think I got dropped on my chakras when I was a baby.” We do give each other high-fives, but not five of them, only two for each of us three, that’s good enough. The sun shines brighter.

These little feral kids are mad. They dance around to the messed-up music with hoola hoops and facepaint on, completely in their element, just crazy. A little girl hisses at me with claws and zebra face paint on. “Oh you’re scarey…” She hesitates and then snobs me. This guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Another toddler boy runs up to me laughing and socks me in the nuts with his hoola hoop. I just want to chuck the little shit.

MC Mum stops the proceedings after Able plays. “Hey you guys. After the gig’s over, you gotta pack up your shit and leave. You can’t camp over night. You gotta pick your shit off the ground behind you when you go too. Thanks.” We talk about her after. I hope she doesn’t read this cause I feel like I’ve been a naughty toddler again.

“DJ Premix is mad, ey.”

When we’re heading back… I observe some trees at the dip at the bottom of the valley road. “That looks kind of weird…” She drives past them then asks me what I said. “Nothing…” I’m trying not to piss her off but everything that comes out of my mouth is shit. She gets annoyed with the music later. “Can you turn it down? It’s loud.” “Okay.” Two songs later. “You can it up again now, it’s okay.” “Okay.” We get to a petrol station, and moral is high. We’re getting back to the city, and the mood is light. “See this, this is the aussie dream right here. I miss this doofing shit, look over there. Those guys were at the doof too, it was like our own world outside of typical boundaries, only we shared that and a certain mentality.” “But how are Nestle. They’re fucking evil. Killer pythons are now in wrappers, and read what it says on the back. It says “Good nutrition and regular exercise are beneficial to your health.” What the fuck does that even mean when they’re selling you this bogging translucent chemical goop out of these machines and then feed it to our children and call it lollies, and they’re dressed up as snakes or gummi bears. You know what gummi bears are made out of?” “What.” “They’re made out of gelatine.” “Horse’s hooves?” “No, animal bones.” “And they feed it to our kids? Woah.”

PRINGLES CONVERSATION “See that guy on the pringles container, that’s Hitler. His mostache is just sideways.” “Cylindrical heaven, shit is the bomb. Pizza flavour yeah. Swag for days.” “They should have pringle beer.” “They should have pringle vodka, cause then it’s like potato.” “…but that’s not potato chips, it’s like goop too.” “It’s great goop though, once you pop, you can’t stop.” “Yeah, full UK tazi driver rant with it. Have you seen that?” “Seen what?” “Oh don’t worry.” “What do you mean?” “It’s complicated.”

“How’s lebos, how confident they are and they act fully sick, but they’re not. It’s like they’re comedy, but they’re fully serious about what they are.” “They’re the opposite of Louis CK. Louis hates himself, but Lebos love themselves. They both are exactly what they are.”

“So yeah, they’re fully munted hey. He’s walking around the camp with his arms tight by his side like a penguin and occasionally going “Woah.”” “Woah.” “But we nursed them okay, they’re harmless, but fuck they’re full-on.”